So Help Him
by Jobey in Error
Summary: The Half-Blood Prince, half-hearted and half-hardened at the beginning of his sixth year, and by the end of it neither. This fic formerly called "Advanced." Rendered AU by DH and not likely to be finished. 4/10
1. Introductions and Semantics

**A/N: Dedicated to Erica (hey, you've won the Easter-egg hunt!) Totally disclaimed and not my intellectual property. Follow my example and don't use this to make money (it won't work anyway).**

**So Help Him **– **Table of Contents**

**I** – Prologueishly Concerns Introductions and Semantics

**II** – Advanced Potions

**III** – Advanced Defence Against the Dark Arts

**IV** – Mrs Snape's Box

**V** – Slughorn's Protégées

**VI** – Midnight Brewery

**VII** – The Trick

**VIII** – Trifling Disciplinary Issues

**IX **– A Dormitory Altogether Overcrowded and Insomniac

**X** – The Send-Off

**---**

**So Help Him**

**I – Prologueishly Concerns Introductions and Semantics**

"So do _any_ witches wear corsets anymore, or have they all gone, you know – "

"Muggle. With their whatsits."

"Yeah. Right."

Snape wanted to roll his eyes or say something scathing, but upon a moment's reflection he found that he didn't know what they were called either, and decided to instead turn his page.

What a hellish journey the Hogwarts Express was. Avery seemed recently to have picked up some additional worthless groupies – he had really let himself go ever since Evan and Roland had left two years ago. Stuck in a compartment with Avery, Moon, Macmillan, Eames, and Whittle was not how Snape wanted to waste eight hours. Not that he didn't think questions of the female anatomy very interesting in general, but he hated how disgusting that lot could make it sound.

And was it worth it? It's not as though you suffered and were then rewarded. You suffered, and you arrived at Hogwarts, which was only a smidgen better than what you had left behind. This year, in fact, Hogwarts would be worse. Snape had wanted to hide out at Spinner's End forever. Take independent study, apprentice himself to a Knockturn Alley apothecary, throw himself on Lucius Malfoy's patronage, wait out the two years and then go seek out the Knights of Walpurgis – any wild scheme by which he might avoid going to Hogwarts ever again. Yet here he was. Cloistered with the idiots of the school for protection, who were forcing him to think about, of all things, underwear. Snape went miserably red behind his book every so often as a memory he was trying to suppress got loose.

Richard Macmillan spoke up: "Most witches have – you know. Gone Muggle."

Incredulity all around.

"And how would YOU know, Macmillan?" demanded Avery, with a snigger.

"My sister," said Macmillan, unperturbed.

"Oh, right, I forgot," said Henry Moon good-naturedly. "You've one of _those_ sorts of families."

"What's that supposed to mean?" demanded Macmillan, voice going unflatteringly high.

"You know," said Moon, but Macmillan evidently didn't, so Moon helped him out: "All spoony. Sitting down all together 'round a table for dinner, barging into each others rooms, inviting all the cousins over for holidays. You know. _Sickening_."

This bit of spot-on, home-driven oratory didn't really require improvement, but Spurius Whittle provided it anyway: "All lovey-dovey and everything."

Even Snape had to speak up: "It would be very claustrophobic."

"Yeah," agreed Avery, who had not the faintest idea of what claustrophobic meant. They all five of them looked at Macmillan pityingly.

Three would have murdered several people within five years. And Moon and Eames would, at any rate, be flirting with drinking problems.

It was a gorgeous day when more energetic sixteen-year-old boys might feel itchy, contained inside a train for the best eight hours of the day. The sun beamed in pale but visible rays that looked something off a holy card. Snape, who was having trouble concentrating on his book anyway, had to shield his eyes so that the whiteness of the pages reflecting the sun didn't dazzle him. He scowled long and deep as he did so.

"So what's up, Sev?" Avery had broken away from the conversation to perch at his elbow. "You've looked bent out of shape all day." When Snape didn't immediately answer, he ventured: "Trouble with Florence?"

He only wished. No, he was pretty certain that the final days of last term had effectively warded off any girl troubles for the rest of his Hogwarts life. His stomach curdled yet again. He had physical indigestion of his breakfast and mental indigestion of his ignominy. When the Express stopped he would have to leave the relative safety of this compartment and face them all – all their hidden and blatant laughter, everyone looking at him at seeing him upside-down by the lake.

When Snape shook his head, Avery shrugged, looking both good-natured and stupid. He swung his feet around and kicked his heels against the seat for a bit. Snape was about to scream in annoyance. Couldn't he just be left alone with his book?

Fifteen minutes later Avery said out of the blue: "You know, Portia Stubblebine and Dale Fawcett broke up last week in Diagon Alley."

"Really."

"Yeah." A pause, and then, just when Snape was feeling comfortable enough to take up his reading again – "And evidently the other day Peeves managed to startle the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher into shattering some cursed Arabian mirror and she's in St Mungo's tonight. Clive Moon told me so."

"_So_?" Snape hadn't meant to snarl, but really! Insomnia, nerves, a compartmentful of idiots, and now petty he-said she-did gossip – how much could one be expected to take?

"Well, I mean, that's going to be on everyone's minds. It's what, you know, they'll be talking about and stuff." Avery tried to look meaningfully at Snape, but when Avery tried to look meaningful he typically just looked bug-eyed, and Snape was none the wiser.

"Is the crash course over now, Edward?" he demanded. That was something of a slap to the face. Unkindred souls called him Avery; acquaintances called him Edward; but his friends normally dropped a syllable for a cosy "Av'ry."

But Avery did not immediately turn back to the more congenial talk of Moon, Macmillan, and Co. Though looking rather hurt, he persisted after a few more minutes: "So what'd you think of that Exhauriat Curse at the Harpies-Kestrels match? Thought of you first thing when I heard of that."

It was calculated to cheer Snape up; he loved nothing better than an audience to expound on his impressive knowledge of Dark Arts. And it _did _clear his head a little. He did something very unSnapeish: he sighed.

"I only wish it had been _me_," he whispered, with a common sort of longing that, for a moment, made him sound for once just like everybody else.

It was Eugene Eames's fellow Ravenclaw Kealy Quirke coming in with an old _Evening Prophet_ that finally soothed Snape.

The editorial had been written to savage the hundredth anniversary of the official change of Hogwarts's Dark Arts course into _Defence Against the_ Dark Arts, which three additional words had caused a disproportionate amount of mayhem. Snape nodded approvingly at some points in the editorial, which pointed out that this particular anniversary commemorated only semantics: the course had ceased to sport any Dark magic of note long before the name was actually changed; in fact at the time of all the controversy the course's content had differed little from its modern content: minor jinxes, theoretical knowledge of artifacts and creatures, some practical defencive magic (increasing emphasis on the lattermost since). And this was of more than mere academic interest. For Hogwarts – the only school of wizardry that really mattered in all of Britain – was entrusted with passing on all the community's interests and traditions, and it was using its power to stigmatise the Dark Arts, which had gotten their modern name because they were the magics of the hidden, the oppressed; pureblooded scions utilising such magic common-sensically had preserved all of Wizard-kind from the critical threat of Muggle witch-hunters.

Snape tried to explain all this to Avery and Eames as the sky darkened as they rattled very near Hogwarts.

"Yeah, but that's not why you like them," said Avery dismissively, pulling on a jumper. "You just like them 'cause they're fun."

"Stop talking about it," said Eames. "I've heard this all about a billion times from my father."

---

It was very unfortunate that on the carriage ride to the castle Snape overheard one girl point him out to a friend: "Remember last year during OWLs?" and her friend giggled. They were assuredly the only ones to have thought about it at all, but Snape stalked off behind taller Avery for cover and pursued his _Evening Prophet_ relentlessly during dinner, both shutting out the Slytherin chatter behind him and straining to hear…

The next night in Slytherin common room Gunther Shortreed started heckling him. Snape had exchanged the other _Prophet_ for a new edition. Shortreed went over to Snape in his armchair and pretended to read over his shoulder, although it's doubtful Shortreed himself ever read a word in his life.

"Go away," said Snape, after a moment of this.

"Now that's not very nice. Let's have a chat, what say you?"

Snape did not look up. "Er… I'm reading," he said, without enough bite to stop Shortreed, who bounded over to crouch before him, forcing their eyes to meet. Snape looked at him and his earnest expression warily.

"Now, don't overwork yourself there, halfling."

The "halfling" did it. They'd already had this… conversation, but evidently Shortreed was the type you could never jinx too often. Snape flared.

"Do you like having two functional eyes?"

His voice betrayed him by squeaking in his anger. Snape had gone through no part of adolescence gracefully.

"Easy there, Sev." Shortreed leaned in and tweaked his nose. Snape went purple.

"_Don't_ call me 'Sev.'"

"Why?" Shortreed threw himself back upon a chair, arms expanded. "You prefer 'Snivellus' now, do you?"

Many onlookers had to scramble to control their expressions as Snape's eyes darted around the room to see who betrayed amusement. Snape was one of those still upholding the fine old tradition, of respectably strong Slytherinish flavour, concerning the compiling and endless revising of enemy lists.

Others weren't amused at all.

"Hey," said Henry Moon, prefectorially, or as prefectorially as anyone can be who has not quite conquered a Nottingham accent. "We're all Slytherins here. If you have a problem with Severus keep outsiders' immature insults out of it."

"Yeah," said Avery, cheerfully. "Think up your own. _Gunther_."

Shortreed stalked off to fritter away some more of his worthless life. It took Snape a long while to recover from this, the first time anyone had mentioned the incident to him all year, and the last time anyone did so unsolicited.

He tried to continue pursuing the _Prophet_ to take his mind off things. It proved singularly unhelpful. After the obligatory one hundred years' privacy, the list of which of the staff and school board had voted what on the "Defence Against" question had at last been published. Two names struck Snape: Y. A. Binns of History of Magic had voted against the change. Binns, though dead, was still teaching. He must have been something of a defeatist, thought Snape, no one would ever have expected where he'd come down on that question. And an R. J. Lupin of Astronomy had voted yes. At this Snape felt another headache going on. One of the contemporaneous Lupins was one of _their _groupies, their kept prefect. How bloody _typical_. He didn't know a single other thing about Lupin, and so had nothing to focus on except his abominable connections. Between thoughts of Shortreed and what Potter and Black were planning for him even now he spent another insomniatic night, and he gave up picking up a _Prophet_ for the rest of the year.

---

What Avery had meant was this:

James and Sirius hadn't planned a single thing for Snape until the next morning. Before then they hadn't even mentioned him, except in passing on the Express, when James was explaining that he had missed the Harpies-Kestrels match because his parents had gotten an owl from the lake incident and had grounded him for a month. In the end the sentence had been commuted to four days. James had been attempting to complain about it, not explain the leniency. If he had done the latter it would have been this: the elder Potters were not used to flexing their disciplinary muscles. And they had been astonished and guiltily relieved when they thus avoided their son winding up in St Mungo's that night after the attack, with plenty others who had attended, shorn of his magic.

Point being it was 3 September before they spared much of a thought for Snape and where their serial war had left off. In fact it was Peter who had to first remind them. Otherwise they might cheerfully have talked Gryffindor Quidditch and after-hours outings and perhaps even the Corset Question for quite some time. And even Peter only brought it up because he was thinking of his first Advanced Potions lesson later that afternoon.

The effect on Sirius was significant. One moment he was all vibrancy, full of joyous charm and good-will that term was back in again, and that he wouldn't even have to think about Grimmauld Place for months. Peter mentioned Snape, and Sirius immediately darkened. He didn't notice it himself – didn't know that all the sudden his energy evaporated as a certain sickly suspicion replaced laughter in his expression.

Only James seemed unaffected, spirits still high. "Ha! Do you suppose he'll be feeling vengeful after last June?" he asked. It was a sincere question. "Maybe we'd better get the first shot in to be on the safe side."

"Yeah, you know, he just might be," said Sirius, dead-pan. "You may be on to something there."

Peter winced and regretted what he had wrought. Sirius sarcastic was deadly; Sirius sarcastic to his much-adored James was frankly worrisome.

"Did any of you lot get one of those Ministry brochures?" James went on oblivious. "Those self-defence spells? We should try them out, you know."

"Sure we should," agreed Sirius. He could never remain scornful of James for any length of time.

"Our civic duty," said James, warming to his rationalisation. "Because one fine day we may be ambushed by Knights of Walpurgis – with several green-eyed witches looking to our protection – and where would we be if all we had was the memory of a couple of incantations we had never even tested out before? Snape should be _honoured_ we're practising on him."

Dryly, Sirius said, "Funny how none of these lovely witches accompanying us seems to have her own – " Sirius broke off, glance travelling across the table. James's gaze followed.

Remus had his eyes shut tight. Cautiously and cleverly he was reaching between sundry goblets to feel for the syrup. He actually managed to pick it up without incident, but that didn't make the behaviour any more normal.

"Moony? The hell are you doing?"

"Don't see it, don't have to report it," chanted Remus, still with his eyes shut. "Don't see it, don't have to report it."

"Works for me," said Sirius, exchanging a look with James. He didn't quite roll his eyes, but it took an effort not to. "Anyway. Maybe we should try one of the ones that animates something nearby. I'd kind of like to set an ax-wielding suit of armor on him."

"Nah, I liked the sound of the first one. You know, the one that only works Fridays."

"The _Tridecimo_ one?"

"It's _Tredecim_, actually. It blinds."

"Well, wonderful. If we were first-years I might agree that's really great, but I'm thinking something more – "

James interrupted swearing. Remus had knocked over a pitcher of milk and had at last opened his eyes to apologise between laughs to their Housemates to whom the lake was spreading.

**---**


	2. Advanced Potions

_Thanks to auroraziazan and Blackpenny, who, among innumerable other fine qualities I'm sure (such as their taste in fanfic? their penetrating critiques? their dulcet praises?), have some of the niftiest pennames on ff . net. _

**II – Advanced Potions **

NEWT level classes almost took Snape's mind off the lake incident, and they most certainly did any other minds that had spared it any thought. After Advanced Ancient Runes even his usually quick head had been buzzing. Advanced Herbology left him frankly exhausted.

But Advanced Potions he was sure he didn't have to worry about at all. He had brewed his first Draught of Living Death at eight years of age. Eileen Snape never did have much of a sense for age-appropriateness. Before he reached the double-digits she had been teaching him about the Dark Arts. After he had hit the double-digits she had thought better of it and backtracked into making him biscuits in the shape of chickens and trains. He had been carrying around a copy of _Advanced Potion-Making_ for years, mainly to show off.

The only thing he had worried about was the prospect of having his chance to shine ruined. For one thing, his two obvious nemeses. He had heard Black was fairly clever at potion-making and if he had rejoined the class Potter was bound to as well – though it sounded as though _his_ idea of a good Potions class was one where something exploded or made suggestive noises. As it turned out, however, Black was there alone. Snape had to do a double take, but no matter which way he looked at it, Potter wasn't there. He had never imagined the two would split up. One of their especial hangers-on, Pettigrew, accompanied him, but it wasn't the same thing. Anyway, Black didn't look especially thrilled with Pettigrew's companionship. Snape breathed easier. Pettigrew had obviously gotten into the advanced class by the skin of his rather prominent teeth, and with any luck Black would be so busy with him that he, Snape, would go unbothered. And if Black _did _try something, Snape had managed to help Avery scrape an 'E' on his OWL – and even Avery was probably much better backup than Pettigrew.

Snape had also heard a lot about Lily Evans, the redheaded Gryffindor who was supposed to be just as good at Potions as he. This made him feel even more threatened than the prospect of sharing one of his favourite classes with Potter and Black had. Well, they would see. He'd had a stirrer in his hand before he could walk, and he was bound to outperform a Mudblood.

He kept an eye on her while waiting for class to start. They had been pointed out to each other before by Professor Slughorn. She was chatting and laughing at a pretty fast clip with the one Hufflepuff girl in the class. In fact, she appeared to be a total airhead. You could tell she was an ignorant Muggle a mile off.

Roll-call, an introductory lecture that was more oratory than any real information, a Strengthening Solution assigned. _A_ _Strengthening Solution_? thought Snape in scorn. Damned if this wasn't going to be as pointless as the OWL-level course had been! The class dispersed to get the proper ingredients from the supply cupboard and Snape desultorily followed, thinking some rather sharp things about Slughorn.

Who, as it turned out, was coming his way.

"Now, _you _two," he said happily, turning to Snape and, as he immediately realised with no small dread, the Mudblood. "I'm sure neither of you would have any trouble whipping up a class-C potion on the first try, so I thought I'd let the two of you share a little challenge today! I've just received my order for Alihotsy roots, so for once I have all the ingredients on hand for a Blood-Replenishing Potion. Thought the two of you might try your hands at that!"

"Really, sir," the Mudblood said smirkily, "are you planning on _paying_ us for taking on your infirmary-stocking duties?"

So help him, he had just been thinking of saying the same thing.

He hadn't, of course, because it was hopelessly disrespectful. For one moment – a very sweet moment to Snape – Slughorn, unused to this after a two-month holiday, looked stunned at being caught in his ulterior motive (and how very Slytherin of him, to be ashamed of ulterior motives! Severus thought in scorn), with the shock that comes before the rage. But instead of rage, the shock yielded to laughter. He waved a chubby finger at her. "Ah, easy now, Lily! You wouldn't want me to take points from Gryffindor for insolence!"

"I'd win them all back," the Mudblood said musically. So it _was_ true as people said, that she had him on a leash. Conniving wily bit of skirt that she was.

And Slughorn went off still chuckling good-naturedly to himself. Snape felt a certain shame on behalf of proper Slytherins everywhere. He didn't see Evans roll her eyes, as good-naturedly as Slughorn had chortled, but definitely a roll of the eyes. It's doubtful he would have liked her any the better for it.

She turned to him, and – clearly recognising him – gave him a small smile, with hard eyes. "Well then. Shall we get started?"

Snape did not deign to answer. He dignifiedly began to roll up his sleeves, which Evans did as well, but with a certain relish; her polite little smile transforming into a genuine grin at the complicated-looking procedure laid before them.

"Excellent," she said, not deterred by his haughtily taking the pestle and beginning the first step. "I'll take the fruit flies, then. Between us it should only take five or so minutes for prep."

"In that case," he said, "you had better put the cauldron on boil straight away."

There was a command in his voice, but the Mudblood took it – she very briskly did set the cauldron to boil with a free-and-easy air that rendered his attempt to subordinate her useless. Snape, who had grit, kept forgetting just how useless it was and kept it up intermittently, but no dice no matter when he sprung it on her.

---

Cosmic unfairness.

The Mudblood whore had a positive fetish for bare feet and leaving buttons out of their holes. Always some damnably innocuous bit was left unfastened. She always looked like she was lounging and snuggling in her robes. She admitted so herself, talking of course to someone else, one of the girls, or Pettigrew, or sometimes even Avery. He was always standing stupidly by while she was chatting with someone else. "I always liked skirts when I was little. Now I can wear them all the time." The nose. The eyes. The hair. She thought he was "quiet." Of course he was. Did she have to keep her feet exposed in those little brown sandals right up until Hallowe'en? Couldn't she keep her whatsit tightened so her knockers didn't bob around so merrily?

How the bloody hell was he supposed to concentrate?

---

Yet when Slughorn had them working alone, which was more often than not, Snape never appreciated that he could keep his mind on his work and not have Evans's Distractions making him put in fluxweed for juniper or for leaving his flame on too long.

Worse _yet_ was when he had them paired up, but not with each other. Slughorn called this "having my star students pass on some of that expertise." Evans called it "being unpaid teacher's assistants." Snape privately called it "torture."

And if it was "torture" when she was just innocuously pointing out to another, lesser specimen of girl that, strictly speaking, you're not supposed to just toss in your ingredients in any old order, then was there a _word_ for when she was working with another boy? Especially when she was chatting up a storm with him?

Snape couldn't figure out which was worse – Black or Avery.

It certainly hadn't been pleasant the day she and Black had arrived late and set up shop at the same table. At one point he made her laugh. Was she mad? The ignorant hussy! Black! Sirius Black! She was better than that! Black made it his business to bestow his wonderful self only on girls who weren't pureblood. Evans was probably the only Mudblood who hadn't snuck off to some shadowy corner with him. Black had been known to suffer cheerfully through Puddifoot dates just so word would get back home about his latest unsuitable. That miserably lucky bastard, who had everything Snape would have killed for and spat on it.

And then Avery. Avery! That was _not on_. If Evans was taking the high moral ground against Slytherins than she had no right snubbing him and smiling at Avery's pathetic antics.

In his rational moods Snape knew that he was steaming over nothing. Evans hobnobbed with everyone. It usually didn't mean much. Snape didn't think of these as his "rational" moods, however; he was _always_ perfectly in control, always in the right. He blamed it on the fumes from their current intensive work with anacardian potions, which by definition contain rhous. They addled his head. He was probably even allergic. Having grown up Muggle, he of course wasn't as used to it as everybody else.

---

Although as he discovered he wasn't the only one having problems with the anacardian potions.

Snape spent a disproportionate amount of time in the Potions dungeons, though hardly anyone else ever showed up for Slughorn's open lab sessions. But, damn it all, he had to figure out how to perfect his stirring techniques; Evans was showing him up. He was rummaging in the storage cupboards when he heard people coming down, and cringed. He could never concentrate with other people in the classroom.

"… look, Peter, I'll have a shot at it, but I don't see the point, since I haven't even been taking this class. Why don't you ask Sirius?" A pause. Then Snape heard Lupin laugh. "All right. Point taken."

"You _have_ to help me," Pettigrew said, sulkily. "The whole reason I got behind on this is because I was with _you_ last Friday. God forbid anyone _else_ freezes the Willow – "

"All right!" said Lupin hastily. "Hush. Of course I'll take a look at it."

Snape, who had been gearing up for a confrontation, fell quiet at this exchange. There was some distinct blackmail in Pettigrew's voice, and guilt in Lupin's. Highly interesting. He went still, kept to the supplies cupboard, and listened hard.

Unfortunately for him, he was now boxed in his hiding place, and Pettigrew's attitude instantly changed once he had Lupin's compliance. "Thanks _so_ much, Remus," he said, rather cloyingly Snape was inclined to think. "You have no idea how scared I was about facing Slughorn tomorrow without this potion. I knew you would help me."

"Of course I would have," Lupin said, good-naturedly. "You could leave off the guilt trip next time, too. Strictly speaking, when you're breaking international law, you don't go brandying it about. What if someone had been in here?" They were by now actually in the classroom and slinging off their schoolbags. "You know, I had really been looking forward to never setting foot in this classroom again. What's this potion over here?"

_Don't you touch it_, Snape thought. It was incredibly cramped in the shut cupboard – no wonder Lupin had assumed no one was about – but he hesitated to reveal himself. _Breaking international law?_ It fired his imagination at once.

"Waterfowl oils," said Pettigrew. "It must be one of the seventh-years'." Snape smirked to himself. He never had any problem accepting a compliment.

The smirk soon faded. They took _forever_. Still, under the spell of those magic words – "freeze the Willow," "breaking international law" – Snape contrived to pay attention and learn as much as he could. He had never really spared much thought for Potter and Black's satellites before. Over the course of their struggles with the anacardiatic, he gathered that Lupin was reasonably clever, though hopeless with potions – Snape, incredulous, had to consider blowing his cover and making a run for it when Lupin casually suggested "throwing in a dash of vervian" – into a solution consisting chiefly of pwdre ser which they hadn't yet negated! – "just to see what happens, because it's not like it can make this thing any worse." Thankfully, Pettigrew vetoed that. Pettigrew wasn't half so stupid as he liked to seem. After Lupin's three failed tries he was the one who worked out the missing step and made the potion after all. But he was extraordinarily lazy. It was because he hadn't bothered to copy down Slughorn's instructions that they were down there wasting their Sunday evening to begin with. And there were at least a dozen points where Snape, personally, would have told Pettigrew to go do something both unpleasant and obscene – or at least have left the whiny little pest to make his potion himself. Snape could only conclude that it was _excellent_ dirt Pettigrew had.

It was also Pettigrew who figured out, after idly poking at it for a bit with a stirrer while Lupin pored over the index of his textbook, that Snape's untouched potion must be either "Snape's or Lily Evans's."

"Oh, no," said Lupin, humourously doomful, folding back a page. "I can't run into Lily today."

"Why?"

"Well, I never exactly reported Padfoot and Prongs circulating those doctored 'staff room' pictures, but she'll have got wind of it by now."

---

Edward Avery didn't see Evans Snape's way at all. Slughorn often had them working close to each other so that Lily could correct Avery if he was getting catastrophically off-track. Mid-October, walking back up from the dungeon Potions classroom, Avery was saying – and not for the first time – how really all right Evans was, for a Mudblood.

Snape said something Snape-ish.

"Hey, I like her," said the unfortunate Avery, in a defencive tone. "She's awfully nice in class, even though I bollockise things on a fairly regular basis."

" 'Bollockise'," Snape repeated tonelessly.

"Yeah. You know, as in 'bollocks things up,' but I hate having that dangling preposition on the end there."

A pause, and then, "You know, Av'ry, sometimes you surprise me."

Avery bowed deeply, with a flourish. "You're welcome."

But he really didn't care what Avery thought about her – Avery was soft, everybody knew it. What especially annoyed him was the way she had Slughorn wrapped around her little finger. It irked and _irked _him that he had been so perfectly respectful for years and now here was this Mudblood cajoling him and half-bullying him, and him letting her get away with it, and her name getting up more than his. And what's more he despised how she disapproved of him. It was subtle. She was never rude. But you could tell. What business did she have, judging him? Why was _he_ the only one she didn't bubble up to?

Avery, bless his odd bouncy little heart, brought it up, while waiting on him in the Slytherin common room. "Evans doesn't seem to like you much."

"So?"

"You didn't notice?"

"No," said Snape, mendaciously. It had been a sore point for the past two months now.

"She's still steaming over what you said to her last year."

Snape knocked over his inkstand in agitation. "I never spoke to her last year!"

"By the lake."

"You weren't there," said Snape, warningly. Heaven help Avery if he even starting to bring it up.

"No. But she says you called her a Mudblood."

"Oh. That." Snape picked up his schoolbag again, quite dismissive of such stubborn pettiness. "You know, we're going to be late."

"Aw, Sev. You _didn't_. Did you really say that to her?"

"Oh, it was _nothing_," said Snape. "Hand me my gloves, would you? It's nothing anyone normal would have taken any offence over."

"Well, you know," said Avery, swinging his own schoolbag over his shoulder, "the classic response to someone taking offence is to apologise."

---

Apologising proved _hard_. When he first tried to speak with her she asked him to hold up, she couldn't skin her ubolima roots and listen to him at the same time, and if she did she wouldn't do either of them decently. Snape couldn't argue with that logic, but it gave him several more minutes to get keyed up to levels of nerves he had never felt before. When she gave him their full attention the room wasn't as noisy it had been at his chosen moment and there was a thick fog of olive-grape fumes billowing from the cauldron between them. Besides which, she looked full on at him for the first time. Her eyes were _so _green. Snape's mouth was traitorously dry. He had carefully planned out his phraseology the night before, but whatever he muttered was much less articulate. She interrupted him and said sorry, but she couldn't hear him. Then he tried speaking a little more loudly. His voice was somewhat higher-pitched than any male adolescent can be comfortable with. Still, he didn't sound like a total idiot until he finished. Then, when she didn't reply in the first nanosecond, he rushed on with some rambling at a nervous gallop.

He had never made such a fool of himself in his life.

And did she care? The effort, the humiliation? She smiled vaguely at him and shrugged it off. She said of course it was okay. She claimed she "hadn't even thought about it since, really." She – ! She was the most _irritating _girl!

Still, Snape left class feeling strangely cleansed, and her manner toward him _was _rather warmer.

---

Notwithstanding, he didn't stop thinking about it for a solid week.

"You lied," he said to her their next class together, exasperated.

"What?"

"You lied. You told Avery all about it, so yes you _did_ think about it."

She looked at him a moment, and then dissolved into a beautiful grin.

"Okay, okay," she said, giggling a little and looking away, no saint, no goddess, a regular giggly and embarrassed teenager. "You're right."

There were a few awkward moments, with some vague tittering on Evans's part, while they took turns throwing rat tails into the boiling cauldron.

"I owe you an apology, too," said Evans after she had calmed down. Her colour was high, from her laughter and embarrassment and the heat of the cauldron. She beamed at Snape, who almost fell down on the spot. "I seem to remember saying you were as bad as James Potter. I'm really very sorry." She giggled. "I understand if _you_ can't forgive me _that_ one!"

Snape, who didn't understand much about the uncalculating whims of girls, walked on air for days.

---

**Tomorrow (July 7) is my birthday. Do review, on pain of forever knowing you are cold, callous, and "Dursley-ish as it is possible to be."**** -wink-**


	3. Advanced Defence Against the Dark Arts

_Couple of notes here ('cause this chapter is only eleven pages long without 'em). When I post the next chapter the title of this fic will have been changed from _Advanced_ to _So Help Him._ There's a great fanon idea for Snape's sixth year, probably not canonical but at least _fitting_ canon, which I'm itching to try out: That all the 'sneaking around' Snape was doing sixth year was due to Death Eater orders. _Advanced_ suits _that_ fic better – because I could then write a companion fic _Remedial _if I ever have time to explore Malfoy's nightmare of a sixth year. _

_Between reviews and private messaging, I've gotten the impression that practically no one credits any insights Snape had on that conversation between Lupin and Wormtail last chapter. Why? Yes, I know we have to take almost anything Snape thinks with a grain of salt. But it's a grain, mind you, not the whole twenty pound bag. Sometimes Snape is just clueless, yet sometimes he knows better than he knows. (Of course, since he's an 'insufferable know-it-all' himself, he can never distinguish between the two or imagine even that there's anything to distinguish between!)_

_Next chapter is mostly written already and will be much faster. Sorry for the delay on this one. I promise I at least spent it constructively. For proof, check out my "Jobey" fictionpress . com account. _

_And now back to your regularly scheduled program, with apologies from the corporate office. Thanks very much to A.C. Mathur, auroraziazan, Blackpenny, hulahula, indianpipe, Possum 132, PsychoHaired, Random-Musings, and SupportSeverusSnape. Trolling for birthday reviews really does work. Shame I can only try it once a year. _

**III – Advanced Defence Against the Dark Arts**

Snape could hardly tell what the best part about the Hallowe'en Hogsmeade trip was: waiting in line for the privilege of being patted down by Filch, hearing Professor Williamson's nasal apologies for another of her 'episodes' where she had spent five minutes in a corner hopping on one foot and pounding the side of her head so that the sand fell out, or having Avery inform him warningly, "Bella's going to be there, you know."

"That's even more exciting than the fact that I'm passing up a chance to have our dormitory to myself," said Snape waspishly.

Avery tried to return the irritableness: "Oh, and I'll not pass up the chance to lock you inside the Shrieking Shack if I get it, you miserable prig."

"_I_, a prig? We're about to go see _Roland Wilkes_ and _I_ am the prig?"

Considering the nature of those they were going to meet, Snape and Avery were alone and together for once, without Avery's friendlier friends, while the two allied friends increasingly got on each other nerves. There was a somewhat serious tiff when Snape lectured Avery on treating Filch with some respect, only diffused when Avery threw back his head and laughed.

"Yeah, right. Nothing doing, my Prince. Onward!" And he pointed village-wards.

"Which are we meeting at?"

"Three Broomsticks. We have a _lady_ with us, you know." Avery rolled his eyes and groaned. "Not to remind us again. Though, come to think of it, she sort of liked you."

Once they got to the Three Broomsticks, they found all the old crew dominating the corner table. Roland Wilkes was just re-emerging from the loo; Bellatrix Black was leaning back attractively and looking killingly bored; Evan Rosier and the Lestrange brothers were at the bar, loudly jostling other customers out of the way and trying to chat up the barmaid. Rosier, of course, with his almost sinister warmth and charisma, was getting by far the most approval from their buxom quarry. But he dropped it all to warmly hale the two youngest members of the crew.

"Why, it's the schoolboys!" he announced, signaling to Bellatrix and Roland, who had noticed but not given any signal of recognition. Rosier easily gave them the welcome the others neglected. "I think they might have grown a smidgen, too! Av'ry – Severus – how are you, mates?"

Snape, very uncomfortably, found Rosier's arm around his shoulders. He hesitantly tried to shrug it off and then gave up. Rosier's other was around Avery's, and he steered them both one hundred and eighty degrees to face the bar. "Order up, first ones on me, all the rest are on you two kidlets."

It was all noise and joviality; Avery was shrilly protesting that 'kidlet' was the kind of stupid word only _he_ could use, and Rodolphus and Rabastan were both adding some sort of jokes or greeting to the mix, and Snape, for once at the center of all this, found he didn't resent _all _public noise and joviality.

Still, there was such a thing as too much of it, and Snape was glad when they were all seated around the table nursing their drinks, the talk growing more serious, even more depressed.

"Haven't you been able to smoke Slughorn out yet?" asked Wilkes irritably. "_Never_ could stand the man, _no_ proper Slytherin feeling at all."

Snape prayed for Avery not to bring it up, but he did, "No, no. And Sev's still his favourite, you know."

Making a mental note to curse Avery in his sleep (he had done it before), Snape protested, "I'm not and I'm glad I'm not."

"What d'you mean – oh, right, Evans." Avery explained to the rest: "His real favourite is this Mudblood girl, you know he likes them prettier-looking than Severus here."

(Very well; curse him _twice_.)

"The Mudbloods," Rodolphus said dolefully, right on cue (for this conversation had been had so often that Snape could have transcribed it in his sleep). "That's the thing that really sticks about Slughorn."

"I've heard he's even taken up talking in class about some sort of Muggle learning, something called Silliness or whatever, is that right?" asked Evan.

"Besides that," said Avery earnestly, "not only is he nattering on about Muggle Science, but usually his information is _wrong_."

Everyone looked at Avery oddly.

Snape pointedly spoke up. "Slughorn invited me to this Society of Potioneering function," he said. "I'm going to refuse him."

"Why?" asked Rabastan idly.

"Sounds like a good thing for you," said Rosier. "You were always quick with a stirrer and some frog guts."

"The other student he invited was the Mudblood girl," he said darkly. "I shouldn't countenance that."

The subject changed again and Snape never really got an answer to his implicit feeling-of-the-waters.

In fact, it was all too shortly when he realised he was speaking to nobody at all. The Lestranges had their heads bent together and every once in a while there was a dark hint of laughter. Snape strained listening to them for a while, and at one point he caught, "… we'll just have to hope it doesn't…. Right, we're hardly up for that sort of weather spell…" Then they excused themselves and started chatting up a Ravenclaw girl. Pureblood, Snape noticed idly.

He felt entirely shut out of Rosier and Avery's conversation too. After listening to it, he doubted he wanted to be involved.

"I hear there's lots of purebloods dating Mudbloods 'round Hogwarts lately," said Evan casually. "Is that so?"

Snape looked edgily over at Bellatrix. This was a highly sore subject with her; one of her sisters had eloped with a Mudblood, and, more worrisomely, Bellatrix had nearly once hexed him to pieces on the suspicion that her other sister was interested in _him_ – him, Severus Snape! (And he sometimes couldn't help but wonder if that was true.) But Bellatrix seemed unusually mellow that day. Snape had once or twice caught her smiling lazily, which was too odd a sight to think on for long without getting dizzy.

Avery considered. "I don't know," he said doubtfully. "Um… well, is Shortreed a pureblood?"

"Oh yes," said Evan. "An idiot, I'll grant you, but a pureblood idiot. He's a year above you, right?"

"Yeah… he's dating a Mudblood. A _loud_ one. Our year. Hufflepuff."

"Hmm. I've heard of her. Samantha Orr, isn't it?"

"That's the one."

"And I heard Thalia Higgs, too…"

"Right, come to think of it she is, someone named Kincaid… "

Snape, decidedly uninterested, would still rather face feeling bored than feeling out-of-place. Roland Wilkes was not, as Snape thought at first, talking to himself; he was talking to Bellatrix, who didn't appear to be listening to him. Snape noticed she was wearing an engagement ring.

Then he noticed that she was looking intently at him, with uncharacteristically mild half-lidded eyes.

"Let's go for a walk, Snape," she said, cutting Wilkes off mid-sentence. "There's something I need to talk to you about."

"Well… of course…" Snape muttered rather randomly and pointlessly. Rodolphus stopped her on their way out to ask where they were off to. His fiancée appeared to barely even notice that she was laughing lightly at him and saying, "Have a little faith." Rodolphus continued to look suspiciously after Snape as she pushed him out into the cold. Snape concentrated on trying not to look too pleased with himself. Hell, she very well might only want to hex the living daylights out of him, for old times' sake.

But that didn't seem about to happen. They were walking in the residential areas, and anyone looking out their window might see them. Besides, she didn't seem in the mood.

She was much different, Snape noted as they walked in silence. She seemed quieter and less lively – more soft, really, and ten times more thoughtful.

"So how have you been getting along, Snape?" she asked at last, trying for her old harsh tone, and not quite reaching it. "Not that I haven't heard. You keep getting into run-ins with everybody – and you always manage to make sure you're outnumbered too, and then fight back against the wall giving as good as you get." Realising that she was sounding complimentary, she added, "Foolish of you. It sounds almost Gryffindor."

Since she had given both question and answer, Snape figured he was quite justified in saying nothing. They walked on some more until impatience got the better of him, when he asked, "So have you made good use of the past five years?"

Bellatrix actually smiled. It was really getting quite annoying. "What exactly are you trying to ask about, Snape?"

"What am I?" he asked blankly.

"You want to know about _him_. You always did."

He blinked. "I wouldn't've asked you! You always wanted nothing to do with him!"

Her smile widened; she stretched her arms lazily. "Oh, don't cast my childhood follies and poses back in my face. I'll start making fun of that accent you used to have. It was so cute when you kept trying to talk right at first."

Snape was too interested in _him_ to protest that no he didn't ever have an accent.

"Well, what of him?" he asked, trying to sound casual and bored. "You've met him, I suppose?"

"More than once," she said significantly. Her faraway smile remained.

"You're a witch. You can't be in the Knights of Walpurgis."

"If you will cut out that insolent tone, I'll let you in on a little something," she said, pleasantly, dangling the tidbit of knowledge. "We're not really the Knights of Walpurgis. He's formed something completely different from us. We're called Death Eaters."

Death Eaters. He rolled the meme around in his mind, and decided that he liked it reasonably well. Bellatrix watched him musing as though mildly entertained by it.

"Yes, Snape, you'll be introduced to him, as soon as you finish school. He insists upon that for you – all seven years. We've already spoken to him of you. As someone with potential, you understand."

Snape felt tickles of pleasure and prickles of dismay. Yes, yes, _yes_! It had been ages since he had ever envisioned his life not being in on this, but, though sometimes he had been certain that his talent and sincerity would merit a spot, in less daydreamy moments he realised that he had no idea of what sort of hope he had – and now at last he was really and assuredly in! But he had two years yet before finishing Hogwarts, and would gladly have left now to join him. Still, if that was the word… oh, it wasn't _fair_, though, all his other friends who were older had already been in the action for years, and he was worth all of them put together, yet had to wait two years before he even got a shot! The war might be over by then! Irritably he asked, "So when did you first meet the nobody upstart pawn?"

Bellatrix laughed lightly to hear her own words. Really she sounded most uncharacteristic. "Oh, don't cast my old attitudes up to me, boy. I was very ignorant when I said those words. Was it only a year or two ago?" she asked dreamily. "Has it really only been two years? I've learned so much of the world since then."

It certainly hadn't made her cynical.

"So what, precisely, have you learned since then?"

"Nothing I can tell _you_," she said, sounding a bit more herself, but still unnaturally quiet. "Still, I'll tell you this much – he's no pawn. If anything we're the pawns."

"Including you?" Snape asked, digging carefully as a paleontologist suspecting he is on the verge of ancient dragon remains. "Miss Black herself?"

"Even Miss Black," she said quietly. "Soon to be Mrs Lestrange, you know."

"Oh, _really_. From the way you were talking I could have imagined you had given yourself heart and body to _him_."

"Tred lightly. No, I don't care. I used to hate the thought of being Mrs Lestrange – but now I have a _purpose_. My marriage and all the rest of my life is just a thin veneer for the _real core_."

"And what's the – ah – 'real core'?" Snape asked grumpily.

"You'll understand one day."

Snape glared at the singing bird in the tree above them. He wanted to practice a wandless curse on it, but settled for saying, "And until that day?"

"Oh, carry on, Snape. Patience, you know. Keep on with your studies and hone your talents – he'll find you useful."

Now Snape wanted to practice that same curse _on her_. He hated that tone – suggesting that he would merely be a useful servant, while she was in the leisurely inner circle. He was never going to be a good kept plebeian. All the sudden he remembered with clarity his first year, which had been Bella's last, she queening it up over the entire school. He began to chew over all the times she had sent him to the Owlery with one of her letters to post or to swipe something from the kitchens for her when she knew perfectly well that it was past first-years' curfew. Also, she had dragged him on this aimless walk damn well able to see that he had no cloak. It occurred to him just then how much he really hated Bellatrix Black. Another addition to the ever-lengthening list. In his pockets, he balled his fists.

"We should meet the others again," Bellatrix was saying lazily. It sounded to Snape like her voice was coming from terribly far off.

---

Professor Williamson returned from St Mungo's within a month, and Snape wished ardently she had stayed for two. But that Monday it turned out that even Snape did not dislike her so much as Sirius Black. For that day's class she had decided to sponsor "dialogues" between "those dissimilar in blood and background" meant to "promote understanding." She paired Black with Evans.

"Excuse me," he told her flatly, tonelessly. "I'm a Gryffindor." It was clear that ever afterwards he intended to treat her with a careless insolence. But all this did was to provide a bit of a laugh for his classmates, however, because no one else could take her very seriously.

It was a shame, too. She was so very self-consciously brave about the need to halt class every ten minutes or so, go to a corner, and hop for a while on each foot with head tilted to clear sand out of her ears. She always apologised afterwards and it was very awkward until James Potter found his stride.

"Don't mention it, Professor," he would say gallantly, interrupting her feeble, embarrassed witticisms about these episodes. "That Peeves is a real joker, eh?" And, when even this wore thin, he would proceed to scheming: "You know, if you let us look at that mirror, I'm sure we could find a way to reverse it. Practical applications and all…"

There was a certain dearth of that in her classes. Williamson was a painfully political animal. She was quite qualified in actual practice and theory, and indeed spent more time on hard training than most of her critics were prepared to admit. Her specialty, however, was a curious theory (vaguely shared by Professor Slughorn) that "current events" were caused by a mutual breach between the Houses, which was nobody's fault and everybody's – though simultaneously it was also caused by "purism," which was the fault of every pureblood, whether or not they were visibly purist or not. She gave no quarter to the standard interpretation in Hogwarts, which Black was now articulating, that Slytherin was the bastion of purebloods and Gryffindor the refuge of blood traitors and Mudbloods. Such a simple-minded belief, she informed them, also contributed to the war. Basically they all bore the blood and magic shed in the recent attacks, just as much as if they all had actually performed the Dark spells. The way to overcome this sorry state of affaires, was, evidently, to talk about it for hours upon hours. Snape longed for the idea of a class where he would simply be free to pursue her personal library, which was quite impressive although pockmarked by like-minded 'social consciousness' writers.

There were more purebloods than Mudbloods, evidently, and Williamson had Snape and his Housemate Zinnia Hawkins share their Mudblood partner. It was the loud Hufflepuff, Samantha Orr.

Snape noticed early on that Orr was determinedly working with Hawkins and not talking to him, and he didn't mind a bit. He looked witheringly down at their list of discussion questions.

_Tell me/us about your most significant childhood memory._

_Tell me/us about some of the differences in everyday life between wizards and Muggles. _

_Tell me/us about a time you have been made to feel unworthy to partake in the Wizarding community due to your magical heritage. _

Was he allowed to say "Merlin's beard"?

"Well, these questions are all you-know-what," snorted Orr, fiddling with her hair. It had been very badly and obviously dyed black at the tips. "_You_'re a pureblood," she said to Hawkins, "and I'm sure you're just fine. The only pureblood in this room I have a problem with is sitting right before me." And she leaned back and glared at Snape.

Zinnia Hawkins looked nervous. Snape's Housemates were in the habit of offending him as little as possible, but you couldn't expect some clueless Hufflepuff to understand what Snape was capable of.

"And why's that?" asked Snape indifferently.

"Because you called Lily Evans a you-know-what last year. I was there, I heard."

"Well, she speaks to me now. I'm sure you can, at least long enough to finish this stupid assignment."

"Oh, of course she would. Lily's too forgiving for her own good. But she deserves a proper apology and by all accounts you're too much of a you-know-what to ever give it."

"I have so. I have apologised."

Orr looked at him in disbelief and then stomped all the way across the room to Evans and a cross-armed Black, whom she evidently ordered to go away and not listen. The girls had a whispered confrontation while most of the classroom stared, including Professor Williamson, who appeared to be thinking about directly supervising Snape's group if it couldn't get along. But Orr flounced back over and nodded to Snape.

"She says you're okay."

Snape was far too annoyed with the girl to feel fluttery and pleased about Evans's seal of approval, but later that night the flutters would kick in.

"Okay," said Hawkins cautiously, looking from one to the other, "so are you two willing to exchange this information for the stuff at the top now?"

"I'm up for it," said Orr, smiling at Snape. "I know you've also hexed my boyfriend last year but I'm willing to overlook it, Gunther usually deserves it. What Zinnia and I just did was duplicate our papers and exchange a copy so we can fill in all the 'partner's information' faster… yeah, like that…" They bent busily for a moment, Snape trying to think if he could design a more pointless class if he tried and not much paying attention to Orr's name or address or wand type. But she interrupted his reverie by querying, "What does the O stand for?"

He wanted to snap back _none of your business_ but, remembering that Evans had just vouched for his fitness in decent female society, settled for merely asking with an incredulous note, "Do you really care?"

"I love wizard names. They're a scream. It's probably Ossiferius or something. But anyway… that means your initials are S. O. S., doesn't it?" Orr began to giggle.

Hawkins was the one who asked, "So?" Snape certainly didn't care enough to enquire.

"Oh… probably a Muggle thing… it's a call for help on a radio… you know," she said, miming talking into a wireless (which made her look very much as though she was attacking her own face with her hand, in Snape's opinion). "Sort of like 'Mayday!' or 'Need rescuing!'… and now you two have learned a Muggle thing for when Williamson asks, so we're pretty much done." She smirked and tittered. "I don't really give a you-know-what about your childhood memories, to tell you the truth."

Which was the first and last glimmer of sense Snape ever got out of the girl.

---

Came a brilliantly warm 1 December. Snape noted with pleasure that his usual seatmate seemed to have simply not bothered coming into class that day. That pleasure lasted until the quartet of hell arrived, last of everybody, but with a disgusting impression of boundless energy. Their usual seats had been taken.

Snape noted in horror the empty spot next to him. He listened mightily to their whispered conference.

There was a smirk in Black's voice as he said, "I'll volunteer to pair up with dear Snivellus."

Potter was in the midst of a protest about Black getting all the fun and Pettigrew was in the midst of saying that worked just fine for him when Lupin broke in, sounding harassed: "You will _not_."

"Oh, won't I?" Black challenged.

"No, you won't."

"I suppose you will?"

"Better me than you," said Lupin, tired and irritable.

"Yeah?" said Potter, with an elaborate air of deference. "What about me, Moony?"

"You least of all – hey!" Black had snatched his textbook right out of his hands.

"Well, as usual, you're the only one who brought a book," said Black idly, pretending to flip through it.

"Yeah, the rest of us will need it," said Potter. He smiled beatifically as Black said, with a dangerous sweetness,

"You can share Snape's."

Horrified, Lupin moved to try getting his book, and in the failed attempt Potter disburdened him of his schoolbag. Black promptly plunged a hand into it and came up with a crumpled bit of parchment.

"We'll need entertainment, you understand," Potter explained most solicitously.

Black was laughing as he held the jottings up to the light to read. "Really, Moony, this is classic! What say I read it aloud to everyone?"

"Sirius…" Lupin sighed and scratched behind his neck hopelessly. Snape noticed that Pettigrew couldn't quite ingratiate himself into this scene and was looking at Lupin with positive jealousy.

"High literature, this is!" Black insisted.

"Come on," Lupin hissed, "class is going to start in about thirty seconds."

"So?" said Black.

"Everybody's staring."

"_So_?" said Potter, whom Snape had always known liked nothing better than attention. Lupin made a desperate lunge for his schoolbag; Potter snatched it out of reach at the last possible second, throwing off Lupin's balance badly and causing him to stumble headlong into the wall. There was now some tittering as well as staring from those who had nothing better to do than to watch the quartet of hell. Laughing themselves, Potter rather patronisingly returned Lupin his schoolbag, and Black patted him on the head. "Run along now, you'll want to be in that coveted seat before the bell rings. Say hello to Snivellus for me."

"I wish you would stop calling him that," said Lupin, quite ineffectually. "And I saw that."

Black rolled his eyes even as he retracted his fingers. "I wasn't trying to hide it, Remus, I'm hardly quaking in fear of your payback."

"Have a good class," said Potter, sweetly.

"Hey!" said Black, staring after Pettigrew. "That little rat already grabbed the seat next to Mercy Mullen! I can't believe it! Why didn't she slap him across the face?"

"Forget it, Padfoot, she's pureblood anyway," laughed Potter. "Against your policy, isn't it?..."

Rather disheveled from his treatment at Potter and Black's hands, Lupin gave such a quick and nervous nod to Snape as to be positively rude, sat down next to him, and almost promptly eased the mutual awkwardness by putting his head down on the desk and not opening his eyes until Williamson called them to order. Harmless as he seemed, Snape continued to keep a wary lookout from the corner of his eye. For the first time it was occurring to him to wonder if Lupin – always known to be sickly – had any particular malady.

"Four absent in this class as well," Williamson noted. "We have something of an endemic today. What's the occasion?"

There was some uncomfortable shuffling from the preached-at choir. Finally James Potter spoke up: "Well, Professor, some people just need the occasional mental-health holiday." Williamson looked at him and his boldness doubtfully. "Not us, though," said Potter, piously. "We here can all handle it. We're made of sterner stuff. Dedicated scholars, us." And Williamson did smile. (Snape rolled his eyes. Lupin, to whom this all must have been so much familiar background noise, didn't bat an eye at all. Though sitting up, he was distinctly bleary-eyed.)

Williamson directed the dedicated scholars' attention to the model resting on two desks clothed with black velvet. There was a series of runes around the edge of a small silver platform; above it splinters of multicoloured light shifted around aimlessly. Could anyone tell her what it was?

Snape's hand was in the air almost before the question was out. To his delight nobody else looked to have a clue. He loved when that happened.

"Mr Snape?"

"The Model Forsythe," he replied, trying to convey the all of his unimpressed complacency in his voice. "You can create models of wards by using a full range of _carminulla_, or 'spells in diminutive,' and simulate tests. Such simulations have long been known to prove fairly sloppy, however," he said, not trying to hide the disdain in his voice. "There's a large gap between the model and the actual situation. Look to the recent Harpies-Kestrel match. The stadium's Forsythe had 'proved' security was unbreechable, yet we now have close to seventy wizards, now shorn of their magic, as evidence otherwise."

There was total silence and plenty of attentive stares his way by the time he finished. Snape didn't have long to preen, though; Williamson was frowning at him.

"Such models are not foolproof," she said, with dignity. "But the dedication of accomplished wizards has brought them a long way and continued refinement could one day come close to perfecting them. It is still better to have an idea of whether or not a novel combination of spells – for wards by nature involve intricate _combinations_ – will at least be workable."

Snape kept his expression bland as she resumed her lecture, though inwardly scoffing. Anyone who knew anything about wards could tell a 'workable' combination from an unworkable one without having to set up an expensive and erratic little device like that. Also, she hadn't given him House points for his answer. Idiot bint.

Idiot bint or not, he was alarmed when she looked over in his direction some ten minutes later and demanded, "Are you paying attention, young man?" Snape twitched, but, thankfully, she was talking to Lupin, who shifted hurriedly to sit up straight again.

"Yes ma'am."

"Really?" She motioned to her model; the splinters of light were now stiller and those that moved were not so aimless. "So, using Mr Snape's example, do you suppose this set of wards would have offered sufficient protection for the Harpies-Kestrel attack?"

There was a prevalent sense around the room of _whew, thank goodness she didn't call on me_, but Lupin considered it. "Well," he said, after a moment, and Snape realised in wonder that he knew what he was about to speak of, "it has the merit of keeping unapproved _wizards_ out – you can tell by the purple – and Muggles, of course, as a corollary. That's an improvement on original security, because at the match they were mainly focused on outlawing magical creatures and artifacts. But it has the drawback, also common to the original security, of keeping those inside _in_, with no provision for the emergencies. You can tell that by the thick white outline around the stadium. That's excellent if the wards are meant to enclose something. But, except by air – by broom – nobody at the match could escape."

Snape blinked. And how did _he_ know all that?

"That's all correct, and very good," said Williamson, reluctantly. "But it only proves that you have previous knowledge of wards. Please do pay attention. Where's your book, Mr Lupin? We're on page eighty-eight."

"We have it, Professor," offered Potter, laughter in his voice. "It's not his fault."

"Where's yours, Mr Potter?"

He looked steadily at her. "Delivery owl was feeling peckish this morning," he said, seriously.

---

The absentees didn't return for any classes that day. They didn't return for dinner. They didn't return by nightfall, and by nightfall everyone knew that they weren't returning anytime soon. Rumours had already either reached Hogwarts or originated there: kidnapped! That was an absurd thought at first; it was the threat their mothers were using all the time lately on their younger brothers and sisters to keep them close by and inside at night, now that attacks were on the rise. But the kidnapping seemed more and more probable as the hours passed without any definite news at all.

A small group of friends, seventh- and sixth-years, and mainly Hufflepuffs, had managed to sneak out of school. Some of their friends that hadn't participated provided details: an ex-classmate who had dropped out of school now drove the Knight Bus and would not refuse them passage to London. _Surely_ they weren't stupid enough to go down Knockturn Alley? – no, they hadn't planned on it, so far as anyone knew. How had they gotten out? it was asked, and others whispered to the few who were ignorant about a well-known passageway that took you out of Hogwarts and into Hogsmeade, the one behind Gregory the Smarmy's old statue.

"I can't believe I hadn't known about that," said Snape, aggrieved. Such a passageway seemed a great beacon of freedom. Even to have known a way out of the school except through the front doors would have made being there more tolerable.

"You do realise it was an attack, don't you?" replied Avery, white-faced. They were sitting off together in the common room around a small table where many a time Snape had either wiped Avery off the board in chess or done his homework for him at exorbitant prices.

"They were Hufflepuffs. Kincaid, Marius Flambard, Shortreed's idiot girlfriend… I wouldn't be at all surprised if that lot got lost in a bad Muggle neighbourhood and turned up tomorrow some twelve hours off-schedule."

"Severus!" Avery's hair was plastered to his forehead. Very nervous bastard, Avery was. "Don't be ridiculous – this was _us_!"

"What do you mean, us?"

Avery at last had his long-cherished wish to for once, just once, grasp something Severus Snape didn't. But he was in no mood to crow. "In the Three Broomsticks Evan was asking me all about which purebloods were dating which Mudbloods," he hissed. "All about _people who went missing today_."

Snape looked at him quizzically.

"And how did they know that exactly those people would be fool enough to sneak out of Hogwarts and go off in the open?"

Avery threw up his hands. "I don't know. I'm not the slick one. But… Evan could charm that information off of anyone, you know how he is. Maybe he got it off Shortreed. Shortreed's been skulking in his dormitory with a hangover all day. Maybe Evan talked to him last night – probably Shortreed was supposed to go as well!"

Snape tried to take this seriously, but the horrified look on Avery's face was priceless. He looked like an overdone actor, for all he was sincere. Indeed the sincerity made it more ridiculous yet.

"Probably they were stupid enough to run into some sort of Muggle gang – "

"Muggles have gangs?" Avery chewed on this. It was a new idea.

" – and that Orr girl ran off at the mouth and called them a bunch of _you-know-whats_." Snape snorted. "Whatever it was, I really doubt it was us…_why _we would bother when there's so many other Ramora to fry…"

"Muggle gangs," muttered Avery, distractedly, leaning back again as though his seat were made of fire. "Yes… that could be it, couldn't it…"

Avery was tossing and turning all that night. Snape's bed was next to his, and it was really very annoying.


	4. Mrs Snape's Box

_Thanks very much to auroraziazan and PsychoHaired for non-trolled-for-reviews. _

_This chapter is rather hugely indebted to an episode in Susan M. Coolidge's "What Katy Did at School." The Katy series is not exactly high literature - not even so high as the Potter series, if you'll believe me - but it's very sweet and homey, and the "At School" is lots of fun. Mainly because our well-brought-up heroines befriend a girl whoserves about as much time in detention as the Weasley twins. All very tangential, this, but I had better acknowledge where I got the idea, and, if my inventory and imagination fails to be as delightful, you at least know where to get a Box that was immensely satisfying and endless. _

_To the site admins: for heavens' sakes, just allow us to use symbols! I need the fun little cartoonish way of putting swearwords, and you can hardly do it without an asterisk or the 'a' in the little circle!_

**Chapter Four – Mrs Snape's Box**

The Great Hall was full, of teenagers mainly, and at least half of them were only poking at their food. The talk was barely loud enough to make any headway against the howling blizzard overhead. At least a couple of girls were red-eyed amidst classmates so glum themselves as to be stony-faced and unsympathetic. A few – including, naturally, James Potter, also known to our intrepid hero as "that #!$&! buffoon" – were trying for genial exuberance, but no one was responding more than half-heartedly to their jokes and crackers, and any laughter was abrasive and short-lived. The poltergeist, to be sure, was twice as zany as usual, and kept dropping things from high above that tended to explode. He crept behind a miserable-looking fourth-year Slytherin girl and shouted "BOO!" The girl started sobbing with miserable hiccupping, and some of her friends sitting nearby caught it and commenced crying as well.

In case you couldn't tell, this was Christmas breakfast. You could see why all Dumbledore's detractors were saying dourly that he kept Hogwarts School in such a whirl of merriment that they couldn't for the life of them imagine how students learnt under his frivolous, nonsensical regime.

---

When it was first announced that no one would be able to get out through the blizzard to go home for the holiday, Sirius Black had swept up some nondescript and awkward Ravenclaw into an exuberant waltz all the way down the first-floor corridor, face alight, crying out, "Happy Christmas, everyone!"

But that had been the only light-hearted moment in quite a while. The blizzard had now raged and whirled with an unceasing solid whoosh for eight days – and eight days ago was the last anyone had been able to receive an owl. It had already killed one of Hagrid's dogs with one bit of hail whipped by a wind of almost one hundred miles per hour into his eye. The best predictions were that it would last almost a week more, and, although the professors who had done some tests denied it, there were rumours that the storm was magical and caused by _them_.

---

Lily felt someone tugging on her sleeve. About the height of a first year. She turned to find two of them at her side, dull-eyed.

"Hey, what's up?"

"Are we all going to die?"

Lily blinked. She couldn't deny that some of the same thoughts had been going through her head. But why would anyone pick to ask _her_? Why did they assume that she was privy to some insider knowledge?

"Eventually," her roommate Trish Smethley informed them. Lily levelled her with a glare.

"Of course not," said Nearly Headless Nick stoutly. "You see Dumbledore up there, don't you?"

"Yeah," agreed Lily, thankful. "What he said."

But her general lack of conviction shone through, and the boys went off uncomforted. Lily had to admit, it was hard to blame them. They were six classmates down (still unaccounted for). Professor Williamson's Model Forsythe was being put to work. Curfew was tight as a noose and not very many were all that eager to break it anyway. The Christmas-shopping Hogsmeade trip had only been saved from cancellation by swarms of Hit Wizards.

---

Towards the tail end of breakfast, there was commotion above. Many startled badly. Everyone had actually gotten used to the absence of owl post – painful though it was, for it made them feel that not only was the world outside uncertain and dangerous, but that they were irrevocably cut off from it.

Some girls cried "Ooooh!" and "I'm sure it's for me!", and the air tensed even more when everyone realised that the three owls were all carrying one package. Only one person would get it, then.

Snape had been sitting and sulking, about as out of touch with the general gloom as Peeves and Potter. Staying at Hogwarts over holiday was always bad enough to begin with, seeing as he hated the place and all, and especially when all the powerful, proper families called their children home as an expected matter of course. But this year was the worst yet. Not a single student had been able to leave, so the place was as jam-packed with insufferables as usual, without even the blessed distraction of classes. Also, that enormous traitor Edmund Avery was chatting away with Henry Moon and Dickon Bright as though they were the best of pals. To top it all off, he'd had a dream last night – not typical of _that_ sort of dream, no, which of course he wouldn't have minded, but all full of strange tenderness – asinine, it was. Nothing could have put him more out of sorts, though this event came pretty close.

The owls collapsed with a frozen, exhausted relief right in front of him – on top of his plate. All the eyes in the hall were on Snape. There was not a student who wasn't envious.

Snape glowered at the frosty-winged owls and impatiently lifted the box up, tapping it with his wand to cleanse it of the marmalade, and shoving his plate roughly aside.

"Ooh, my, how did they get through?" asked Zinnia Hawkins, with a cluck of sympathy for the owls. "Here, little fellow, we'll get you dried off – "

"Lucky bastard!" cried Dickon Bright approvingly. "Open it, Severus, let's see what you got."

"Ooh, please do!" cried Hawkins. "I can't believe it got through – "

"Share the wealth, Sev," said Gunther Shortreed, with a wink.

Snape gave Shortreed a devastating glare. "What House do you think this is, Hufflepuff?"

"Oh, Severus, you don't have to share anything if you don't want to," said Irene Yaxley. "But let's just _see _it. I want to see _someone _open up a Christmas present."

People where rushing and elbowing to crowd around him, a half-circle pressing in at his back, a thin line craning over the other side of the table, on which some enterprising classmates perched for the best view, Henry Moon among them – oddly enough, many of these were boys, hungry-eyed boys despite their ample breakfast.

Other students – less ready than the Slytherins to crowd around – had rushed to the windows in wild hopes that the storm had abated enough for more owls to come through. It hadn't. But waves of talk flowed forth again, quick, excited.

"Merlin's beard, what is that stuff?" demanded Yaxley, as the boys set to opening the box with wands and steak knifes.

"Masking tape," said Snape shortly.

"So it's Muggle?"

"Shut the hell up," he muttered, inaudibly, humiliated.

"It must have _some_ kind of magic on it," said Avery quickly, detecting Snape's discomfort. "I mean powerful magic. Nothing else got through that blizzard."

Snape supposed that Avery must be right. Still, she might have sealed the cursed thing shut with magic instead of wrapping it all up with three uneven layers of shipping tape. It was quite a job for them to rip through, especially as the box was so heavy that it was hard to lift or overturn. And how did his mother, supposedly a former Slytherin, not realise that such a goody box sent over breakfast post was a bended-knee _invitation _for petty thievery?

Here, too, Snape was wrong. Yes, as always, there were light-fingered opportunists, but only two or three trinkets out of simply hundreds. Most backed off, knowing instinctively that the box was consecrated by love.

And, too, possibly cursed, when you considered the woman had bore and raised _Snape_.

Once the top had been opened, however, some of Snape's anger, born from confusion and a dislike of the unexpected, began to dissipate. He was as curious as anyone to its contents. Normally he knew not to expect to be overawed by his parents' gifts, but he was aware of how improbable it was for him of all people to have a parcel come through to him, and was not entirely blind to the romanticism of the moment. He forgot to even mind the people leaning on his shoulder and craning his necks so that their faces were right next to his.

On the very top was a green-and-silver scarf, very well made, curled up around cheap inkstands from some Not-Over-a-Knut store in every colour of the rainbow, and about six different little packages that smelled delicious, and turned out to contain biscuits and tarts and sweets and nuts and gingersnaps in several varieties. Tucked along the sides, and rather unforgiving in their use of space, were – and for a moment Severus had to give his mother credit – _Find of the Century (With an Inventory of Swindell's Famous Artifact Collection)_, _Hogwarts, a History_, _The Malenfant Grimoire 1977_, _Clumsy Titles are Just the Beginning: The Politics of Modern Curricula,_ _The Azeri Edition of Oriental Potioneering_, and even _Modern Magical History_ in a bright glinted binding, first edition.

"Books?" said Shortreed in disappointment. "Man, Snape, tough luck."

"Severus likes books," said Avery stoutly. "Keep on, Sev, I still want to see – "

In the middle was a brand-new schoolbag, with every pocket bulging with something or another – new quills (also from Not-Over-a-Knut), several photographs, two different Gobstones sets, a pocket-watch chain, finely wrought in silver, and then a pocket-watch itself, the Wizarding sort, a planetary watch. Snape was most interested in the pocket watch, which looked quite old; on the back were the initials S. E. P. He fingered the P.

"For 'Prince,'" he muttered. "I think it was my grandfather's."

"Bloody hell, Severus, never mind the _watch_," said Avery impatiently. "There's another one of those little packages, bet there's something to eat in there."

"You just ate breakfast!" Snape said irritably, but obediently dug in for the package Avery had his eye on and tossed it to him. Avery put it underneath his nose. "Cinnamon crumble!" he shouted, to universal interest and pleading looks at Snape, who said they might all divvy it between them. "I'll cut it up!" announced Avery, whipping a knife around rather carelessly (Irene ducked just in time). "Carry on, my Prince, that box is still over half-full."

Inside the main body of the schoolbag was a set of deep green dress robes, very shoddily made, and a photograph album that had been cramped in too forcefully now featured a great bend in the first half. Underneath the new schoolbag were –

Shortreed swore as he leaned back and crackled. "Flowers? _Flowers_?"

Snape was, for once, actually thinking along the same lines as Shortreed, and he lifted the petal-iced, dark-red roses and brittle baby's breath gingerly. Hawkins and Yaxley admired them so sincerely that he promptly offered them each some. But he glowered when Hawkins made a move to kiss him on the cheek. As if they ever paid him any mind when he wasn't receiving stuffed boxes! (Besides, Hawkins was dead ugly.) This was true – in large part because they were a little afraid of him, always sensing that he was thinking the worst of everybody – and only a stuffed box gave them at last a pretext for being as friendly to him now as they usually were.

"All right, ladies, there you are," said Bright impatiently. "Go on, go on!"

Snape looked at him. "_Easy_!"

Bright had a bright red patch of excitement on each cheek. Almost everybody's eyes were a little feverish. Even ultra-snobby Portia Stubblebine could not hide her avid curiosity.

Word of the box's variety and inexhaustibility travelled fast, and James and Sirius _did _debate going over for a little fun – for whenever Snape was the centre of attention it posed a golden opportunity no at-war tactician could pass up – but they debated it halfheartedly, and if Remus had objected even in his typical hinting, diffident way, they would have dropped the plan with a sort of relief, but Remus was inspired to a piercing glare that he himself forgot soon after, but that his friends never quite did. "It's a _Christmas box_," he said, ever so pointedly, "from his _mother_." Remus could never stand up to them when quailing meant interrupting the education of their peers, failing his Dumbledore-given prefectorial duties, public humiliation of the innocent, a breach of international law, or endangering lives, but, gulping gargoyles, Christmas parcels from one's mother are _sacred_.

It was especially lucky they didn't come over just then, for Snape was already close to squirming. Without much regard for proprieties, his roommates were still searching through his new schoolbag. Henry Moon had discovered a pair of red worsted mittens. There was a great round of "awww"s from the girls. That it was mostly sincere did not make the scene more tolerable for Snape.

"Put down my bag," he snapped at his roommates, Avery, Moon, and Bright. "Whose Christmas box is this anyway?"

Avery, grinning almost crazily in his delight, tossed him the bag, but held onto the mittens, which Severus obviously wanted out of sight, but was too embarrassed to speak of them aloud. "These are awesome. The mittens are even tied together with yarn so that you don't lose one of 'em – I haven't seen that since my little brother outgrew his!"

"Shut up."

"Give them back to him, Av'ry," said a new voice, and, unseen, Snape scowled to realise Professor Slughorn had come over. "He doesn't want to lose track of it, after all…"

"Care for some fudge, sir," said Snape, as rudely as he dared. Avery was delighted, and had to hide a snigger.

"Mrs Snape made it," said Bright eagerly. "Didn't she, Snape?"

"Oh, I very much doubt that," he said darkly, but no one was actually paying him much attention. Slughorn, profusely congratulating Snape on his treat, accepted the proffered square. Angry beyond words at the congratulations, Snape upturned the rest of the package onto the table. There were several gasps – and then greedy hands reaching out. It was really marvellous that so little was stolen with how much it was all passed around from hand to longing hand.

Snape spent several minutes looking for the red worsted mittens, with vague thoughts of setting fire to them. Unable to find them, he finally gave an ear to Avery's exclamations. It was incredible the delight Avery took in each item, most of which were notable for their extreme commonplaceness.

"A bottle of wood polish, Sev!" (Avery was one of the few people who could call Snape "Sev" and not be put onto the Half-Blood Prince's ever-lengthening enemy lists.) "And underwear! Long underwear!"

"_Thank_ you, Avery," said Snape, coldly. "Why don't you go and advertise that more loudly."

Wrong suggestion, with Avery as wound up as everybody else at the Slytherin table's impromptu celebration.

"A WHOLE PACKAGE OF LONG COTTON UNDERWEAR!" hollered Avery. If Snape had known where his wand was just then under all his mother's fluff he would have hit Avery with _Sectumsempra_ on the spot. Avery went on unaware of his close call. "A little velvet drawstring pouch here – hell, I swear that woman bought Not-Over-a-Knut's whole inventory for you – "

Only Avery, of all their old group, could say that as though it were a _good _thing.

" – one of those potion ingredients replenishing kits – smells terrible, must be top-of-the-line – a _toenail clipper_, blimey, I wish my mother sent this stuff – here's some random silver key – and a couple of unicorn figurines – "

"I collect those," said Portia Stubblebine, thawing out to a remarkable degree. "They were made about twenty years ago, look how strong the spellwork is still. Roswick Enchantments. Let them run across the table."

Rather nonplused, Snape complied.

"Your mum must 'a collected them," said Henry Moon. "When she was our age."

"They're lovely," said Snape, trying very hard to sound neutral. "For girls."

"Hey, Severus. I would just h'about kill for one of those biscuits."

"Help yourself. It can't be that good, I see Slughorn left."

"Yeah, well, that's him," said Moon, reaching over the table for the cellophaned plate.

"Shampoo!" announced Avery, who was still taking inventory with a vicarious greed on Snape's other side. Snape kicked him, hard, underneath the table. Avery appeared not to feel anything. "Oy – and bubble bath!"

There were more flowers in the bottom, which some of the girls sorted out and bouquetted together again for Snape. He fingered for a moment, thinking. He was toying with the idea of giving them to Lily Evans. The more half-seconds he devoted to the fantasy, the more serious it got. She would – she would – how _would_ she react? It almost didn't matter in a way, just to give them would have been satisfaction enough. And, if nothing else, it would just make the #!$&! buffoon's Christmas, wouldn't it!

Henry Moon had bitten into the fudge with a satisfaction far out of proportion to the actual object in his hand. It was not really the food they all found so wonderful, not even the boys – who nevertheless felt it safer to speak as though it were.

"Your mother," he said, with feeling, "is fan-bloody-_tas_-tic."

Snape flared. That was the thing he hated most of all – that now no one would realise the miserable home-life he had risen above. A notch off his resume. No one would believe it now, because Snape's mam was so fan-bloody-_tas_-tic, just for having once in a fit of boredom sent him a great useless boxful of junk.

"You so think now," saidSnape fiercely, eagre to set the record straight. "She's a pathetic cowering woman who normally is so preoccupied with her little miseries that she has no strength to spare for me. She's _weak_."

"Yeah" – wide-eyed and mouth full of biscuit – "but she's a _terrific _cook."

"She is not. She stole them from the old hag next door."

His will to give the flowers to Evans vanished like mist in the sunrise. What his Housemates would say – what Evans would say – and, while Snape certainly wasn't _scared_ of the #!$&! buffoon's reprisal, why bring that additional hassle on himself for a silly, pointless little whim? She was a _Mudblood_. Was he planning on winding up like his mother? His pathetic, damnable, thrice-cursed mother?

He tapped a bit of purple ribbon with his wand so that it tied itself messily around the remaining carnations, got up, and took them over to the Slytherin fourth-year girls.

"For the love of Merlin," he said ungraciously, giving them to the girl Peeves had scared, "stop crying."

She blinked her red eyes at him. "Me?"

"Happy Christmas."

And it was then that Snape saw at last saw Dumbledore, who had been sitting at the Slytherin table on the outskirts of things, his chin on clasped hands so that he had watched the opening like a little child. Snape stopped short as their eyes locked. He had never, in fact, spoken to Dumbledore before, although he had been threatened with interrogation by the headmaster more than once when his teachers suspected Snape the source of some ugliness, not always without reason. Snape never did quite know just what to think about Dumbledore. On one hand, Snape admired excellence of mind and of status, and Dumbledore had both. There was also a Gryffindorish bit of unorthodoxy, but Snape wasn't nearly so much a purist as he liked to pretend (he was too intelligent for it). Also, although various teachers had spoken of suspending him, they had evidently never gotten approval from Dumbledore for it. On the other hand, suspicion of Dumbledore ran high amongst his crowd in general. He was said to be manipulative and all the more dangerous for his mask of benign eccentricity. And he had to thrust himself in everything, especially the things that weren't his business at all.

Well, anyway, Snape told himself, he had nothing to feel worried about. Hell, he had just been doing something _nice_.

Dumbledore didn't mention it, though. He smiled at Snape, who wished that their eye contact was not quite so full as it was, but who would not back down. "A very happy Christmas to you, Mr Snape."

Snape suddenly realised that the red worsted mittens were dangling from Dumbledore's hands. "What are you doing here?"

"Why, I had to come and see. It's an absolute marvel this box came through, you realise. You see how all your classmates want to share in this – well, so did I, really." Dumbledore looked down and then altered his tone slightly as though he had only just then remembered what he held. "Ah, yes. You'll forgive me my little liberty? Homemade mittens, I _do_ confess jealousy."

Well. You could see why people said Dumbledore was cracked.

"Keep them," he said shortly. "They're too small for me."

"So I will. Thank you very much."

Snape looked suspicious. "You're really going to keep them?"

"Of course I will. They must be hand-knitted, I know that your mother can no longer cast spells… but then," he reflected further, examining the mittens and not looking at Snape, "but then, how did she get the box through?" He looked up again at Snape, who was wondering if he were being accused. It was undeniable that his mother scarcely did magic anymore – to Snape's eternal shame. Having trudged through most of her adult life in varying stages of depression, Eileen Snape could still make potions, and normally see magic, and occasionally even got a broom to operate for her, but spell casting she almost never managed anymore. Rather discomforting that Dumbledore knew it, though. Lucius Malfoy had always used to complain about him being a nosy old bastard.

Even had he wanted to reply, Snape could not have thought of a thing. Dumbledore waited for a polite length and even a little longer, but Snape was dumbstruck at having this thrown in his face.

"It's not everyday," Dumbledore concluded at last, "such things happen. All the best to your mother." He shook his head. "Remarkable."

Snape hightailed it back to his seat. Dickon Bright and Irene Yaxley, on opposite sides of the table, were pulling apart long strips of gooey taffy. But Avery, Moon, and Zinnia Hawkins were trying to regather everything and put it back into his box, chatting as they did so with an unusually warm camaraderie as they accidentally scattered gingersnaps and roseleafs to the floor. There were things they had all missed the first time through. A teakettle full of Bertie Bott's Every-Flavoured Beans. A little wind-up frog. Bookmarks. A pair of bootlaces. How she had packed everything into that box was as much a mystery of how she had sent it through the storm (she'd had to redo it about eighteen times). While Snape scowled and punched his pillow because his shameful blood-traitor mother had the nerve to make herself so conspicuous (what would Malfoy start saying?), it was too late. "Mrs Snape's box" was known for years by lonely war-uneasy Hogwarts students as an example of the minor miracles that motherlove could accomplish.


End file.
